Snapshot … (left to right) Belinda Wickens’ father, Luis Santamaria, 10, and his brothers, José, 12, and Ramón, 10, with the Welsh couple who gave them afternoon tea.

Snapshot: A feast my refugee father never forgot

This photo was taken in 1938. My father was a child war refugee. Four thousand Basque children had arrived in Britain from Spain in 1937, leaving behind the atrocities of a civil war. In 1938, they were lodged at Sketty Park children’s home in Swansea.

While the world raged, parents were faced with decisions as to which child to save. Boys were often the ones sent away, the thinking being that girls would be more fragile. Hence my father and his two brothers sailed on the Habana to Southampton. He was nine when he said goodbye to his parents. It was about 45 years before he saw them again, after the dictator had died. There was no fanfare.

Isolated, bereft and afraid, the children could be saved only by the generosity of their host nations.

In the picture are my father, Luis Santamaria, 10, and his brothers, José, 12, and Ramón, 10, and a couple from Swansea who had invited the three brothers into their home for afternoon tea. The man was a miner, and the couple were of modest means, the house sparsely furnished. Their names have been lost, but the picture still stands on my father’s mantelpiece to this day. He has not forgotten them.

My father remembers the feast. “We had been eating the same as everybody else – bread and lard, mostly. And then to be presented with a smack-up feed was beyond expectation. Only years later did we realise that the food alone must have cost them a week’s salary, and the extent of their kindness. In Spain, we were foraging for food in waste bins and wherever we could.” In later years in England, his mother, on a visit from Bilbao, shed tears when she saw discarded bread, in the gutter in London. The sight of unwanted food was too much for her.

This was truly a meeting of cultures. The couple spoke no Spanish, and the boys knew no English. Communication was by sign language. But the gesture needed no translation.

My father is still a character around Notting Hill Gate in west London, where he and many of his contemporaries live. He graduated in the 50s from Shoreditch technical college, in east London, as a cabinet-maker and worked as such for many years. He later passed his skills as a cabinet-maker on to innumerable other young adults in Britain as an instructor, as one should in life.

It will be 80 years next year since the diaspora of the Basque children. My father does his own ironing, and still cooks decent paella.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers.

Belinda Wickens

Playlist: A bike trip and a first taste of independence

When I’m Sixty-Four by the Beatles

“When I get older losing my hair / Many years from now / Will you still be sending me a valentine / Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?”

In 1967, at the age of 14, my friend John and I went on a week’s cycling and fishing holiday to the Lake District, staying in youth hostels. Looking back, I can’t believe our parents allowed us on such an expedition with the only condition that we promised to phone home (reverse charge) every evening.

We cycled the 80-odd miles from our homes in Harrogate on our heavy three-speed bicycles. After a hard day’s cycling, we arrived at Coniston youth hostel only to be told we were not booked in. We should have been at a different youth hostel, which was two miles up a steep track and impossible to reach by bike.

Totally dejected and exhausted, we finally arrived at the right hostel, to be greeted by the warden who announced that we were late, had missed tea and our beds had been let to someone else. Thankfully, he was joking and told us to refresh and meet back at the dining room. We tucked into the best mince and mash I have ever tasted, while he put on the latest Beatles album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It certainly lifted our spirits and the week’s holiday continued without further mishap. It is still my favourite Beatles album and, whenever I hear a track, I am transported back to that holiday, my first taste of independence.

I am losing my hair, have grandchildren, like the Vera, Chuck and Dave of the song, 64 is not many years from now, but my wife does get a valentine though we don’t rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight, preferring Cornwall. But she is my Lovely Rita, meter maid.

Quarter the cabbages, leaving the core intact. Dunk the cabbage in water and salt generously in between the leaves, using more salt towards the stems. Let it sit for two hours, turning every 30 minutes. Then wash well, to get rid of all the salt. While the cabbage is salting, boil two cups of water with the glutinous rice flour for 10 minutes. Add the sugar, boil for a further minute, then let it cool to room temperature. Mix the cooled mixture with the rest of the ingredients until it creates a bright red paste. Smooth the paste over the cabbage and let the kimchi sit out for a day or two to ferment. Once the kimchi is sour to your liking, put it in the fridge to slow the fermentation.

My mamma used to feed me garlic and fermented cabbage. She then sprayed me with lemony perfume before I left the house, otherwise, she said: “White people will think you smell.” Now, I smell lemons and think of kimchi – orange, wrinkly, smelly – and early-morning coach rides to school with my hair plaited in two.

My mamma cooked me beef brined in pear juice, noodles dressed in chilli, and pork belly charred on a portable grill on our kitchen table. We feasted on our homeland food in secret, and then made pasta for my friends when they came to stay. We had a separate fridge for our kimchi, because it smells.

My mamma taught me how to wash rice before you put it in the pressure cooker, swirled and swirled and swirled again. Our pressure cooker talks! It tells you when the rice is ready in fuzzy Korean. I ate rice every day. I eat rice every day. A meal is not complete without kimchi.

There is a word in Korean – nigul nigul. It means when you have eaten too much butter, too much rich food, and you feel sick and not right and need something spicy to stop the nausea. My mamma gets this when she goes away, and her mamma does, too. We could be anywhere in the world and mamma would need kimchi. She will find herself some kimchi. She brings hot sauce around in her bag. I used to scorn this, and now I find that I get nigul nigul, too. I took kimchi with me to university and didn’t let anyone open my fridge door.

My mamma started a Korean restaurant that sold people Korean food. People queued up for hours for a taste of her £3 kimchi that they would mostly leave.

And now I see kimchi everywhere, stuffed with tomatoes, on hotdogs, with cheese, with truffle oil. I see people eating kimchi tacos and omelettes and kimchi-infused ice-creams. I see kimchi – my orange wrinkly, smelly cabbage – and think of my hair plaited in two, and my mamma apologising for the smell of garlic.

Jemma Paek

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